Sunday, April 5, 2015

Whaddup? Poker With The Trooper!

The Trooper does a great Vlog that you
can find on YouTube right here.But if you haven’t heard of him, don’t click
that link just yet.If you do, you’ll
start watching all his videos and you’ll forget to come back here to read the
rest of this post.You’ll be laughing
too hard.

Do I have to explain what a Vlog
is?Hopefully not, but if so, it’s just
a blog that is done in video format instead of the written format, like this
one.

Anyway, he’s been doing his Vlog for
awhile now, and I only recently discovered it.Now, I wouldn’t miss an episode. The Trooper lives in Vegas and chronicles his
efforts to grind his way through the Vegas poker world.He records his videos while driving to his
destination, or walking through a casino to get to the poker room, or walking
the streets of Vegas (the Strip and downtown).So you get a lot of flavor of Vegas along with his monologues.In addition to poker, he talks and sometimes
rants about other things going on in his life, like his love of Starbucks, his plans
to work out more, and his plans to eat less junk food. The videos have terrific
production values—carefully selected music, great editing, etc.

But the reason to watch them is The
Trooper himself.His enthusiasm, his
attitude, his way with words (mostly the “f” one) are infectious.I dare you to watch one and not laugh.The Trooper has a great on-screen personality
that comes through in all his work.

So, sometime before my last visit to
Vegas, I discovered his videos and eventually started interacting with The
Trooper on Twitter.One night, I noticed
that he was tweeting about playing at the MGM, and he mentioned that some of
the ladies passing by were a bit of a distraction.Who knew?

Actually, this was in the early
evening, so I took the liberty of tweeting to him that he needed to wait for it
to get closer to club-opening time and then he would really be
distracted.In that context, I tweeted
him the link to my infamous Slut Parade post (here),
which he retweeted. A couple of tweeters who follow both of us chimed in, at
least one suggesting he try to do a video with the Slut Parade in the
background.

Then, a few days before my most recent
trip, I saw on twitter, and later in his blog (here),
that Nickmet
Trooper and even played poker with him.I figured if Trooper was willing to meet Nick, he’d surely be willing to
meet me.

So when I saw him tweet out that he
was eating and about to start a session, I asked him where he was playing.Planet Hollywood, he said, and I had a good
excuse to stop working and head over there.

I figured I’d have no trouble
recognizing Trooper from his videos, as long as he was wearing his baseball cap
(which, I should point out, he always wears the proper way).When I got to the
room, it didn’t take me long to identify him.I gave him a quick once over but didn’t say hello.I figured I would just try to get to his
table and then introduce myself.But I
thought I saw him noticing me looking around.I noted what number his table was, so I could ask for a transfer to it
as soon as possible.

They sent me to a different table but
within a few minutes I was called to Trooper’s table.Unfortunately, we were on opposite sides of
the table, about as far away from each other as we could be.Trooper was definitely eyeing me as I took
seat 8.I didn’t want to shout over the
table, and honestly, I didn’t want to identify either one of us
publically.So I tweeted to him that it was me who had just taken seat 8.

I hadn’t noticed that there was
already a tweet waiting for me from him.It said, “I dunno why I notice things all around the poker room. But,
never seeing you before, are you in seat 8?”

So when he saw my tweet, he tweeted
back to look at the tweet he had just sent.He had identified me just from the way I was acting when I got to the
poker room.I guess that’s a “tell.”

I tweeted back how impressive that
was, and that his powers of observation are no doubt a key to his poker
success.

So I was getting settled into my seat
and putting my phone away now that we had established who and where we
were.I happened to glance around, and I
noticed a young woman at the table across from mine. She reminded me of some
pictures I had seen from a woman I knew only from Twitter.If I was right, her name was Amanda and she
had recently moved to Vegas from L.A. and had bounced around the country before
that.I recall tweeting back and forth
with her quite a bit when she made her first visit to Vegas a year
earlier.I also recalled that she had
tweeted comments back to me about some of my blog posts, so she was familiar
with the blog. And thus, obviously, she was a woman of impeccable taste.

As I said, she had posted a bunch of
pictures of herself on Twitter (and Instagram too) and I thought it might be
her.I was far from certain though.With Trooper it was easy because not only had
I seen him a lot on his videos, but I knew in advance that he was going to be
at Planet Hollywood. I didn’t know that she was going to be there, all I knew
was that she was now living in Vegas.I
checked her Twitter feed to see if she might have tweeted a clue to her whereabouts
but there was nothing there.So I
decided to be discreet and send her a direct message on Twitter, asking her if
she was playing at PH and facing Earl of Sandwich.

I kept looking over at her and
eventually I saw her look at her phone and then she looked around, and DM’d me
back to confirm that she was indeed there and asked me where I was. No doubt she was a little freaked out, and might
have thought that she had a stalker. Then, I tweeted back some bad info.I said I was across from her and in seat 8, but
failed to tell her it was the table across from her.She looked over at the woman in seat 8 at her
game and looked confused.So rather than
tweet back, I waited until I was out of a hand and went over to introduce
myself.It was only then that I realized
she was playing in a tournament, not a cash game, so I could neither invite her
to join Trooper and me or stay and chat much with her other than to just say
hello.It was a very brief visit but I’m
sure I’ll run into her again, and am looking forward to that. You can find
Amanda on Twitter here.

There were really only two hands worth
talking about, one occurred early, the other one late.Down a few chips from original $200 buy-in, I
looked down at the dreaded pocket Kings.It was just my second session of this trip,
and the first time I’d seen them since setting foot back in Nevada.I raised to $12 and had two callers.The flop was 6-6-3, rainbow.I bet $30.One player folded and the other one took his sweet time.I read his hesitancy as trying to decide
between calling and folding, but of course, I’ve sometimes misread that and
only later learn out the decision was between calling and raising.After quite a while, he called.

I really liked the turn, which was a
King.I put out $45 and this time my
opponent snap called.It was odd how
fast he called after hesitating on the flop.Did he like the King that much?Really?Did he have Ace-King or
King-Queen?Would he have really called
the flop with that?

I don’t remember the river, it didn’t
seem important.I probably would have
shoved the river no matter what, based on my remaining stack and the size of
the pot, but the way he snap called the turn convinced me he was going to call
any river bet I could make.My shove was
around $105-$115 and he had me covered.He tanked for a while and then disappointingly folded.

I sort of just ran in place with my
winnings for awhile.I basically got
nothing to play.The table started thinning
out.And then, I called a raise to $10
with Ace-6 of hearts (note: I’m pretty much always calling a “reasonable”,
single raise with any hand I would raise with myself, and A-6 sooooted is such
a hand).It was three or four
handed.The flop had two hearts, so I
called the preflop raiser’s $20 bet and it was heads up.The turn was a blank and I called a $30
bet.The river was a 4 of hearts, giving
me the nut flush but pairing the board.

The guy led out for $60.I guess I got a little spooked by the board
being paired, as I decided to just play it safe and just call.Note:There were some hands towards the end of my previous trip—some I’ve yet
to discuss—where I got burned value betting the river. I think I haven’t gotten
some of those nightmares out of my mind.He said he had nothing, and flipped over King-Queen. He really did have
nothing, there wasn’t even a good draw for him.He triple barreled with air.Obviously I took down the pot, and obviously if I had raised his river
bet he wouldn’t have called.But yes, I
know that’s not the way to look at it, and I probably should have raised.

With that, I had slightly over $200
profit in front of me.And the seat to
my left opened up and Trooper moved over to it.We started what was a nearly 90-minute conversation.However, there was almost no more poker
played there.A bunch of other players
got up, and we were down to four-handed.We could have gone to another game, but we both kind of felt like moving
on.I cashed out up $205 for 90-minutes
of poker.

Trooper was unsure where he wanted to
play, and I figured I had to take a food break pretty soon.His original tweet was about his pre-poker
meal so I knew he wouldn’t be interested in eating.

But we were having a nice
conversation, and as we exited Planet Hollywood, we just stood there on the
strip and chatted on and on.It didn’t
hurt that there were some good looking street performers right in front of
us:A couple of lady “cops” who were
wearing shirts tied bellow the bust and hot pants.They had rather large breasts which were
generously displayed.Coming in, we had
both seen a couple of ladies dressed as showgirls whose tops consisted only of
pasties (with tassels).But they were presently
nowhere to be found.

We talked on and on, mostly about our respective
blogs.He really has grand plans to make
his Vlog bigger and better and start making some serious money off of it.We talked about poker comps and how CET does
them so much better than MGM Resorts. We also talked a lot about people we both
know and/or follow both of our blogs—and about our encounters with them in
poker rooms.One of my readers posted in
the 2+2 forums asking him to video the Slut Parade.He said he tried but it is really too
difficult to do it without getting into trouble.

Suddenly a guy on the sidewalk started
playing his drums really, really loudly right next to us.This may have been the reason the lady cops
left.And that may have been the reason
the two of us finally started walking.He said he was thinking about playing at Bally’s, and since that’s where
I had parked my car (The Planet Hollywood parking lot is my second least
favorite poker room parking lot in Vegas, for the record—Flamingo is #1), we
walked together.Along the way, Trooper
pointed out a few landmarks (coffee places, food places, etc) that had been
featured in his Vlogs.

When we got to Bally’s poker room we
hung out at the rail while they were starting their weekly freeroll.He recognized a couple of players and I was
surprised that no one was familiar to me. He told me a great story.I dunno if he’s told this on his Vlog but I
haven’t seen it, so without his permission, I’ll relay it here.I hope he doesn’t mind.

Back about 7 years ago, playing at the
now-defunct Sunset Station poker room, he hit the big bad beat jackpot that
Stations was running.He said he was
down to his last $140 (I assume until his next payday) and flopped a set of
7’s.He and his opponent got it all in
as the other guy had a set of 9’s. Ouch. He was not a happy Trooper, to say the
least. Both hands were now face up.

The turn was the case 7, and everyone,
not just the Trooper, got excited.He
was happy he had hit his miracle one-outer of course, but everyone at the table
was now aware that hitting the bad beat jackpot was an actual possibility.The excitement woke up the dealer, who,
according to Trooper, hadn’t really been paying attention until then.

Trooper was on the dealer’s right, so
he was last to see the river card.He
didn’t need to see it.He heard the
screams from the players on the other side of the table as they all saw that
case 9 in the dealer’s hand before he put down on the board.The whole poker room erupted.

In fact, Trooper’s buddy was in the
Men’s Room at the time, and he heard the commotion from there.Trooper and his pal had an agreement that if
either one of them hit it, they would give the other one some of the winnings,
so Trooper paid his buddy.

Trooper got $45K for his losing hand,
the winning hand was worth $30K and all the players at all Stations poker rooms
got a table share, which turned out to be more than $1K.Oddly enough, both Trooper and the winner got
a table share too.

I finally said goodbye to Trooper
after one of the most interesting conversations I can remember.He really is a good guy, and I have to say
in person he’s pretty much the same guy he is on his videos.Except somewhat less hyper, I guess.But he is quite the talker, I have to
say.Not a quiet person.Except at the poker table that is.Until he moved next to me, he didn’t seem to
be talking at all.We didn’t play long
enough for me to get a good feel for his game, but the results he talks about
on his videos are impressive.

OK, that’s my meeting with The
Trooper.No go click that link at the
begging of this post and check out his videos.You will laugh, I assure you.

Oh, and since this post is going up on
Easter Sunday, I found a couple of pics of Easter “bunnies” that I rather like.I trust The Trooper will approve.

22 comments:

Okay I don't know if The Trooper has a brother, but I swear I slept with his twin brother. Is he related to a guy named Doug? Seriously. The guy could be his clone. Same voice, same facial structure, sort of average penis that bends to the right. I'm a chick by the way.

Trooper's Vlog is a little low on poker content, which I really like.... If I have to choose between hearing someone explain his 3betting range preflop, or the off table issues that come with being a Vegas grinder, I will always choose the second.

Meant TBC obv... And actually Rob since I started reading your blog about a month ago, the only noticeable change in my game has been when I get dealt Pocket Kings, Pre-Rob, I'd think "Alright!" now I think, "Fuuuuuuuckkk!"